I learned not to confuse 'busy' with 'productive,' but I'm still far too addicted to email to resist its early-morning digital snuggles.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I'm always busy, but I'm lazy as well.
Email is having an increasingly pernicious effect. Not only is it having a perceptible effect on productivity, it's skewing what it is we focus on. The immediate increasingly crowds out the important.
I get up, get coffee, and go into my home office. I check email and Twitter before I start work, but I have to try not to get too distracted.
I can't tell you how many times I've been writing an article only to get distracted by an email notification, either on my laptop or smartphone.
I don't use e-mail or a computer. I would be so inundated that I wouldn't be able to get any work done. Instead, I do everything in person or on the phone.
I think of myself as naturally idle. The trouble is, the 'nothing' that I do every day is not really nothing. I potter. I muck about with emails, I make coffee, I fiddle with my computer to make sure that the book I haven't started writing is perfectly synced across all platforms and devices.
One day I'm not busy at all; the next day I have work for months - that's kind of the way it works!
Email is familiar. It's comfortable. It's easy to use. But it might just be the biggest killer of time and productivity in the office today.
I really love being busy because I am - feel like I am at my best when I am busy.
I don't use the Internet, as I don't like living with lots of distractions. I have tried, but I found it a hindrance. as my sense of priorities goes out of the window and it pulls me out of my writing, particularly with email. I'd sit there for hours just replying to emails.